


Spark

by lilbabybirdie



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Lightning Guardian Midoriya Izuku
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26255629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbabybirdie/pseuds/lilbabybirdie
Summary: Becoming a hero is hard when you and all your friends are part of the most powerful mafia family in the world. But Izuku's never let things like common sense and international law stop him.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 136





	Spark

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't crossovers where Tsuna got a new guardian use to be popular? I miss those.

Sunrise painted the sky a dull red, mostly hidden by skyscrapers dotting the horizon. Izuku pressed his cheek to the cold window, breath clouding his view. It seemed like forever since he’d been in a big city, even longer since he’d set foot in his hometown of Musutafu, and watching it approach through the train window caused both excitement and apprehension to squirm through his guts. There were times when he thought he’d never see the place again, but here he was, approaching to take his high school entrance exam. The U.A. Entrance Exam.

God, it didn’t feel real.

Izuku let out a breath, window fogging up even more. This was something else he’d started to think was out of his reach; being a hero was what he’d worked towards, what he’d built his life around, but at the same time he was fully aware of his deficiencies. Heroes were supposed to be good, better than regular folks. They were held to a higher standard so that they could help normal people. Izuku was quirkless, and even overlooking that, there were his… extracurricular activities to take into account. Nobody would want a hero like Izuku. He’d never believed he would become one so much as refused to accept he couldn’t. So taking the U.A. Entrance Exam… in a lot of ways, it felt like his first step to failure. Or maybe success. Either way, it was do or die at this point.

The train rolled to a stop, and Izuku took one last fortifying breath before getting out. Mustafa wasn’t that different from how he remembered, but it felt strange to walk among the skyscrapers again. It was so much louder here than in Namimori. People were everywhere, laughing and talking and shouting, and the traffic was overwhelming. Back home most of the noise came from his friend group.

“Look! A hero!” Someone shouted nearby, and Izuku’s breath caught. Frantically scanning the rooftops, he caught a glimpse of a blue clad hero with some kind of gray, craggy skin. Izuku didn’t recognize him ( _God, he was so behind_ ) but he lit up anyway. It took all he had not to go chasing after him, see what villain he was going to stop. That was something else they didn’t have back home: hero and villain fights. Namimori was too small for a hero to work in full-time, and too quiet for any periodic patrols. The reportedly low crime rate was one of the reasons his mother had moved them there.

She couldn’t have known that the crime rate was less due to Namimori’s peaceful small town nature, and more due to a militant school boy that the local police were either too ashamed or too afraid of to report to any outside authorities.

Twice more Izuku had to keep himself from stopping to watch a villain fight, and even then he was still one of the last to arrive in the exam hall. The commute from Namimori to Mustafa was long; he’d have to get up early in the future, even earlier than usual, to make it to school on time. Assuming he got in, that is. Assuming he passed the test, and the staff didn’t decide they wouldn’t teach a quirkless boy, and nothing suspicious pinged on his background check. Reborn had promised it wouldn’t, but U.A. was the best of the best, and it wasn’t like Tsuna’s family was subtle. What if the U.A. staff noticed something and didn’t tell him? What if he got arrested on his first day of school?

Izuku bit his lip and tried to distract himself by guessing the quirks of everyone around him.

The written exam went by quickly, and he felt like he did alright. He couldn’t compare to someone like Gokudera in terms of sheer knowledge, but he made up for it in intensely dedicated note-taking and study sessions. Yamamoto had once, laughing, told him that watching Izuku study made him feel bad, because he put his all into it while Yamamoto struggled to stay awake. It was embarrassing, but also made him feel kind of proud. No one had really praised his effort before, just belittled him for being too nerdy or not having things come naturally. It was a nice change.

Present Mic introduced the practical exam ( _Present Mic! Holy shit!_ ) and Izuku was oddly relieved to hear they were just fighting robots. It was irrational, but somewhere in his heart Izuku had privately feared that the test would be something outside his range of abilities. Of course they’d choose something that even untrained middle schoolers could do; they weren’t looking to recruit full-fledged heroes. That didn’t stop his nightmares of impossibly difficult tasks like fighting multiple pro heroes at once, or worse, a totally quirk based test where the candidates had to show off how well adapted to hero work their quirks were and he was laughed out of the stadium for not having one at all. But smashing up some robots… not only was Izuku capable of that, it was something he had experience in.

His shoes clunked reassuringly as he walked into the testing area. They were heavy, made of solid metal with rubber insulating the insides and the soles. Reborn had presented them to him years ago, in the week before that fight with Leviathan, after he’d sold his soul to the mafia for ten years to keep his friends safe. They’d been his main weapon ever since, and he wore them everywhere. He supposed he’d have to get them registered as a support item now, if he passed. That meant he’d only be able to wear them in hero situations. The thought made him antsy. Maybe he could beg Reborn to make him a more inconspicuous pair…?

The students around him were shifting restlessly, looking more excited than nervous. Izuku supposed it took a certain amount of confidence to apply to a school like this, or bullheaded determination. Though he was confident in his own abilities, he couldn’t help the light tremors that swept through his limbs. So much could go wrong here. Izuku took a deep breath, and reached deep inside himself for the well of determination that only seemed to grow deeper with each passing year. He could feel the calm of Dying Will settle around him. The other students couldn’t see it, only Flame Actives could, but atop his forehead a green flame sparked into life. He wasn’t like Tsuna or Ryohei or even Gokudera; his flames didn’t do anything visibly impressive like burn his opponents or cause shockwaves. Instead, they augmented his durability. It wasn’t enough to be mistaken for a quirk, not unless he really focused, but it was enough to let him get away with stunts that would land a normal person in the hospital. It would definitely be enough to get him through the exam.

Present Mic’s voice echoed through the arena, shouting that the test had begun, and robots poured into the testing area. One came directly towards him, crawling on metal legs like a giant spider, and Izuku didn’t hesitate. He leapt towards it feet first, the full weight of his body and his metal shoes crushing straight through the head of the robot. It crumpled like a soda can. Izuku was already leaping towards the next one.

He could feel the electricity crackling beneath the metal surface of each robot, but didn’t reach for it. He’d never gotten the hang of manipulating electricity, not without intense concentration, and it wasn’t necessary here. It was counterproductive, even. He didn’t want the examiners seeing something they shouldn’t. He could beat these things with his shoes and body alone. Izuku allowed himself a savage grin.

Once, he might have hesitated. Once, the sight of murderous robots looming over him might have frozen his body with fear. That was before he’d faced down Varia assassins, stood against the Vindice, and even gone toe to toe with Hibari Kyoya. Now he could only fight, Dying Will coursing through him and a lifetime of work behind every kick. Whatever the outcome of this exam was, it was a start. A start to his hero career, to making the world a better place for everyone and not just his small group of friends. A start to being more than a quirkless criminal. He’d crush a hundred robots to make that happen.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit because i am a fool who accidentally marked this as complete.


End file.
